The tourism and hospitality sector in Jordan has been negatively impacted by the pandemic, leading to a need for urgent intervention to address the damage. Challenges include a skills mismatch between employers' requirements and educational institutions' outputs, high youth unemployment rates, a lack of quality services, low female participation in the labor market, and poor digital literacy.

This project of the Amman Hub aims to enhance the employability of underserved youth in the tourism sector and promote equal economic participation of females.

The target group for the project is youth working independently in touristic services within Al Azraq local community, aged 18-35. These individuals should have basic knowledge about touristic sites in Al Azraq and an interest in pursuing a career in the tourism sector.

The Amman Shapers have been providing interactive training sessions covering topics such as interpersonal skills, technical capacity building, financial management, digital skills, and effective communication to serve tourists. The Shapers from Amman Hub have been actively involved in various activities throughout the different phases of the project. From the beginning until now, their primary focus has been to ensure the success of the project. They played a crucial role in the planning phase, where all the Shapers collaborated in brainstorming sessions to develop the project's milestones. Additionally, they assessed the necessity of intervening in such a project. During the execution of the capacity building sessions, the Shapers traveled to the training area and made sure to establish contact with experts to ensure the efficient delivery of the curriculum. They took charge of managing all logistics, including the venue and the facilitators who generously volunteered to support the Shapers during the sessions in the field. Furthermore, the Shapers conducted an outreach campaign aimed at identifying and reaching out to potential beneficiaries who would benefit from the capacity building program. To achieve this, they developed a selection criteria focusing on Azraq's youth interested in exploring opportunities in the tourism and hospitality sector. There were two Shapers who were in charge of this project, Aya Al-Hrout and Ayham Zawahreh. With the support from the rest of the Hub’s Shapers, they are making a resounding success with the project’s impact. Their tireless efforts have contributed significantly to the capacity building program's effectiveness and its positive impact on the youth in Azraq.

The short-term goals of the project include enhancing youth interpersonal and soft skills, improving their professional skills in tourism and hospitality services, and increasing their engagement in the Jordan National Tourism Strategy. The long-term goals are to supply the tourism and hospitality sector with an up-skilled labor pool, improve service quality in the sector, empower and engage youth within local communities, and economically and socially enable females.

Surveys will be used to collect data for monitoring and evaluation purposes. Trainers will fill out surveys to evaluate participants' engagement and learning impact, while participants will fill out surveys to measure their satisfaction levels with the training sessions. Pre-training and post-training skills assessments will also be conducted to measure the effectiveness of the training through skills improvements.

The project is collaborating with the following organizations: Majlisna for Societal Development - Civic UK. MBS Management Laws Business Solutions Jordan Youth Innovation Forum (JYIF)